Another poster child for Ted Cruz's ginned up pandering on the phony issue of religious freedom for bigots who refuse public accommodations to gay customers.
In Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis' case, it's not gay customers, it's gay (and now straight) citizens and taxpayers, since she runs a public office as a personal religious fiefdom in the manner she sees fit, the U.S. Supreme Court and the State of Kentucky be damned.
Davis doesn't approve of the Supreme Court ruling that refusal to grant marriage licenses to gay couples is a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and she has decided to make Rowan County taxpayers pawns of her pettiness.
From Towleroad:

The Rowan County Attorney’s Office has filed a charge of official
misconduct against clerk Kim Davis for her repeated refusal to issue
marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite a federal order. The Morehead Newsreports County Attorney Cecil Watkins said the Rowan County government and his office had no other action against Davis. “No authority exists for her removal or suspension from the office by
Rowan County government,” said Watkins. “Kentucky State Government is
the only entity that can move to have Kim Davis removed as Rowan County
Clerk.” The charge has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office. The
county attorney’s office is prohibited from prosecuting Davis because
they are involved in current litigation with Davis.

The Lexington, Kentucky Herald Leader is fed up with Davis's imperious antics and takes conspicuous note of the fact that Davis worked in her mother's office for 27 years before being elected to take her place and that her son now works there as well. Nepotism, anyone? The paper eviscerated Davis and her Liberty Counsel misbehavior enablers in two scorching editorials here and here.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

The Washington School, chartered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has raised eyebrows among some at the State Department and among lawmakers for its questionable due diligence in vetting instructors.
One teacher, Carlos Alberto Ospina Ovalle, was linked to Colombian killings and another, Garcia Covarrubias, was accused of torture and beatings under Pinochet.
From the Daily Beast / Center for Public Integrity:

The NDU’s Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, where Ospina taught
from 2006 to 2014 before moving to another academic center at the
university’s campus in Washington, D.C., has itself been rocked by
controversy in recent years. A nonpublic report in 2012 by a U.S. Army
colonel, appointed by the center’s director in response to persistent
staff complaints, concluded that “a hostile work environment exists”;
that its staff had displayed “a lack of sensitivity towards the use of
derogatory language”; and many employees felt its leaders routinely
retaliated against those who questioned them. The report, obtained
by CPI under the Freedom of Information Act, depicted a sort of
frat-house atmosphere at the center. It stated that staff had exchanged
“racially charged emails”—including one directed at President Obama;
used offensive language such as “faggot,” “buttboy,” and “homo”; and
that “women employees feel that they are treated inappropriately.” Even
senior leaders used “inappropriate hand gestures,” it said, and
mentioned simulations of masturbation.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Former Vatican papal nuncio, Josef Wesolowski, who had been awaiting trial for various charges including hoarding more than 100,000 computer kiddie porn files inside Vatican City, who was whisked to Vatican City before Dominican Republic officials could arrest him, whose extradition was denied by the Vatican, who didn't show up at his Vatican trial on July 11 because of a sudden unnamed illness, thereby postponing said trial, has died unexpectedly in his private room in a Vatican City Palazzo. The Holy See assures everyone that its initial investigation indicates death by natural causes but the public should be satisfied to know that a thorough autopsy also will be conducted — by the Church. That is all.

There were lots of good-natured gay winks in the scripts of Father Knows Best; the most over-the-top was when Jim and Margaret strong-armed Bud into getting gay-married, after a fashion, at a wedding rehearsal.
Our favorite, excerpted and edited below, was Bud's outing to the baths — to try to rectify a wrong for his sister, of course. Only Dobie Gillis and his best bud Maynard provided more unwittingly homoerotic subtext in 50s television.
Billy Gray, the talented, versatile actor who played Bud Anderson in THE classic American family sitcom, was busted for weed (seeds and stems) in the early 60s and, branded as a dope fiend, didn't work in Hollywood for years. He, though straight, later revealed to Howard Stern that he fooled around enough with one guy to be disqualified from the 60s draft.
During Vietnam, so many guys discovered that truthfully answering question 20 on the pre-induction medical history questionnaire (Do you have or have you ever had homosexual tendencies?) was a get-out-of-the-draft card that the Pentagon decided to remove the written question and instead had it asked verbally at induction centers, hoping to publicly intimidate inductees into lying about incidental gay episodes in their past so they could still be drafted.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Jorge Ramos eventually came back and Trump took his questions — arrogantly. No wonder Hispanics cannot stand Trump. In other news, two state GOP parties are adding anti-Trump clauses to candidate applications.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Above: Eubanks in 1964 when he was a top DJ at KRLA in Los Angeles. That year, he
borrowed $25,000 on his house to produce the Beatles' first LA concert, at the
Hollywood Bowl. Photo: bobeubanks.com

Below, longtime Newlywed Game host Bob Eubanks debunks the urban legend about a contestant answering 'In the butt' to his query about the most unusual place she ever made whoopee — but he debunks the story by noting that what she said was actually worse.

You really don't know who you're dealing with when stopped. Despite the agitprop of your local police union, they're not all Officer Friendly. Some of them are stone-cold, homophobic sociopaths. More, from CBS, here.

Evidently Officer Zagursky didn't get the memo about Philly's efforts to attract gay tourists. Or about extorting motorists for contributions to police organizations. Or about crudely insulting a man's tribute to his cancer-stricken mother.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Above, right: Homeland Security agents remove evidence after arrest of Rentboy.com CEO Jeffrey Hurant and seven employees at company's NYC Union Square offices. Note: adult video actors depicted in event promoted by Rentboy.com in photo at left should not be assumed to be prostitutes.

You might think that such activity is a frivolous waste of part of the tens of billions of your tax dollars eaten up each year by the new agency created by George W. Bush, but stopping gay hookers is a VERY IMPORTANT part of Homeland Security's mission, so don't think for a moment that this is an government agency with too much money:

“The facilitation and promotion of
prostitution offenses across state lines and international borders is a
federal crime made even more egregious when it’s blatantly advertised by
a global criminal enterprise,” according to Glenn Sorge, a DHS special
agent on the case.

Wonkette jumped all over Cotton, but the best takedown was by a commenter (Click graphic to enlarge boxed section.)
Both of Nebraska's radical right-wing GOP Senators appear to be on the same page as reckless extremist Cotton:

Margaret Sullivan's piece, A Grandmother On Wedding Cakes, in the Huffington Post's Gay Voices blog, dissects the cake wars issue, now being exploited by panderer-cum-demagogue Ted Cruz in a campaign video (see left). It is a reasoned, articulate and uncompromising analysis worth reading. An excerpt:

Sixty-one years ago, my mother made my wedding cake -- a buttery
white fruitcake with creamy icing. She assembled tiered cake pans,
candied citron and pineapple, white raisins and blanched almonds, and
then baked the layers over several days. Decorated with holly (Christmas
wedding), the finished cake leaned like the tower of Pisa. But it was
perfect, a labor of love from Mother to us. She even kept the top layer
in her freezer for our first anniversary. Over time, she made the
recipe for my sisters' and brother's weddings, and for our children's,
until, in her late seventies, she forgot salt in one and decided she
shouldn't make more. Were she still living, she would have
rejoiced in the June Supreme Court ruling legalizing same sex marriages.
And no doubt would have dreamed of making a wedding cake for her openly
gay grandson, our son, when the right man comes along.The Blade's article about the Kleins' sending cakes to gay
rights groups — not wedding cakes; eight inch rounds with red hearts on
top saying "We really do love you!" — and their reasons for it
reminded me of how special the cake my mother made us was. And how
special all wedding cakes are.
...As the mother of a potential gay groom who doesn't bake, the owners of
Sweetcakes by Melissa would no doubt have declined my order for a
wedding cake on the grounds that same sex marriage is contrary to their
faith. So I fully understand how the lesbian couple reacted when the
Kleins declined their request. ...Conditional love and second best cakes are not good enough for my son.
Or anyone else's LGBT children either. That isn't equality or respect.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Popular Christian vlogger Sam Rader got busted for getting an Ashley Madison account, so he did what he does, made a video about it! Below: his mea culpa (left) and a photo of him in happier times sharing a tomato with a bud, which apparently is how Christian guys fake the rainbow.

Sam and his wife Nia have made a fortune vlogging on YouTube since their distracted driving, hands-off-the wheel karaoke video got 22 million views on YouTube. They humbly titled it "Good looking parents sing Disney's Frozen" and recorded it as tractor-trailers streaked by in the next lane.

Since then Rader, a nurse, was accused of faking a positive pregnancy test after which his wife allegedly miscarried. They never saw a doctor, but racked up a lot of YouTube views for the "surprise" announcement and again for the miscarriage announcement.
One of their videos, now removed, involved Rader asking his five-year-old daughter about gay marriage and then steering her toward disapproval when he discovered she wasn't with the Christer Condemnation Program about same-sex civil marriage.
Saturday, Rader was kicked out of a Seattle vlogger conference for allegedly threatening a vlogger who had apparently criticized Rader's dubious YouTube claims. When Gawker asked Rader if he had menaced the guy, Rader denied it — sort of:

When asked to clarify whether or not he threatened anyone, Sam told me,
“That’s absolutely not true. If I made a threat, it was to the one
person, and it was, ‘You need to watch out before he messes with my
family.’”

Sometimes exhibitionistic people inadvertently reveal a bit too much about themselves, as when Sam and Nia's swimming video showed Sam winning a friendly race by cutting off the guy in the next lane. Then he did it again in the next race.

Above, Rader, at bottom, cuts off his buddy in the middle lane (at the 5:56 mark here) to win an informal swimming race, then, in the second picture moves in from the center (7:04) to cut him off again in another race. Hey, whatever it takes, as long as you're anointed, right?

The privately-owned German cut-rate grocer (which got into trouble in Britain for selling horsemeat-adulterated hamburger) used to be able to get customers to shag their own carts by holding a quarter per cart as ransom until said cart was rechained to an adjoining one, releasing the coinage. But lately, more patrons have been ditching the carts—and their money — in the parking lot and taking off, even on beautiful days. We assume this will only get worse in the winter.

Does the mindset of college students in Alabama ever change?
2015's Griffin Meyer/Matt Malecki extra-cheesy cheesecake video portrays Alphi Phi as a bunch of whites-only, mostly blondes apparently auditioning for Hugh Hefner.
A "recruitment" video it's not. While Meyer/Malecki evidently wanted to sharpen their steadicam/video editing skills making a titillating T&A come-on, the sorority itself seemed to be going for a vain, airbrushed portrait of exclusivity — the opposite of recruiting, unless you're recruiting primping white snobs rather than a diverse cross-section of academic achievement. The video is the sick result of the panting/egotistic exhibitionism cross purposes of, respectively, the video's makers and subjects. Via rawstory.com:

“It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so
hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives:
College Edition,” wrote magazine editor A.L. Bailey for AL.com. “It’s all so … unempowering.” ...“This video is not reflective of UA’s expectations for student organizations to be responsible digital citizens,” said Deborah Lane,
associate vice president for university relations. “It is important for
student organizations to remember what is posted on social media makes a
difference, today and tomorrow, on how they are viewed and perceived.”

Monday, August 10, 2015

We fail to see how taking people's photos hostage as payback for shutting down the app for Google's intrusive Google+ social media app — which isn't going to unseat Facebook anyway — is anything other than dirty tricksterism or, at least, cynical software engineering by programmers who must have a sniggering contempt for the people who use their software.
Here's what happened to the pictures of one hapless woman who owns an LG Tribute Android phone, and the responses to her plea for help, in the first four panels. Just for kicks, AKSARBENT disabled Google+ on its Android phone, and sure enough, the phone took photos as ransom, just as other Android users have experienced.

Here's a photo of Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, out of the state again after his tour of Europe, in Georgia with Erick Erickson who runs the Red State blog and who apparently wants to be a kingmaker of ruthlessly ambitious politicians eager to make a name for themselves nationally among the most reactionary of the country's teabaggers.
Below the picture, some revolting golden oldies from the quote bank of the newest pal of Nebraska's radical right wing governor:

Wonder if Governor Ricketts attended Erickson's confab on his own or the state's dime?

Thursday, August 6, 2015

LINCOLN, Neb – Today a Nebraska District Court Judge ruled that
Nebraska’s discriminatory treatment, policy and practice, toward gay and
lesbian foster parents is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection
Clause and Due Process Clause. The ACLU of Nebraska, the ACLU LGBT
Rights & HIV Project, and the New York law firm of Sullivan and
Cromwell filed suit on behalf of three same-sex couples who wanted to be
foster parents for children in Nebraska. The policy stems from a 1995
memo, "Memo 1-95" issued by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human
Services.

Nebraska's motto of 'Equality before the Law’ rings out more truly
for all of us on this thrilling day. This is a special victory for
thousands of children in Nebraska who now have more options to find
loving and stable homes. The couples in our case, like thousands of other gay and lesbian
Nebraskans, have demonstrated their ability to provide loving homes for
children. We are grateful for the court's unequivocal, broad, and
positive opinion in favor of LGBT Nebraskans constitutional rights to be
full participants in our child welfare system. Nebraska finally joins America in ending state sponsored
discrimination in policy and practice that hurt Nebraska families and
that prevented children in need from accessing loving and stable foster
families.

Here's what the judge wrote (entire ruling is on ACLU's page, linked above):

Bob Mizer was certainly no Rip Colt (aka Jim French), but what he lacked in quality he more than made up for in quantity. The Advocate reports:

The Bob Mizer Foundation has launched a Kickstarter fundraising project that will assist in the permanent preservation of the vast collection of color transparencies produced by controversial Los Angeles photographer Bob Mizer from the late 1940s until his death in 1992. Monies raised will go directly to the purchase of polypropylene archival sleeves. For more information, please contact: info@BobMizer.org

Seriously, we don't mean to make light of important issues of historical preservation. Maybe, in addition to kickstarter funding, the federal government could help out!
We'd like to know how Senator Ben Sasse feels about this essential issue, but our invite to his invitation-only meeting with constituents in Blair on August 13th at Novozymes at 600 S. 1st Street at 5 p.m. must have been lost in the mail. If you're going, please be sure to ask Senator Sasse if he can get some federal funding for this vital project, won't you?

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

The Des Moines Register's proclamation that Rep. Steve King, (repeatedly endorsed for reelection by the Omaha World-Herald) is an "embarrassment to the State of Iowa" is still true.
The other day Teabagger King claimed that the recent Supreme Court ruling on marriage allows you to marry your lawnmower. He shouldn't have done that.

Nebraska's GOP Governor, Pete Ricketts, who John Oliver called a 'dollar store Lex Luther,' has engineered draconian new unemployment requirements that would cut off benefits to those jobless who don't make five employment contacts a week — the strictest requirements in the nation, despite the fact that Nebraska has the country's lowest unemployment rate, about 2.7%.
Under the proposed rules, unemployment recipients would have to verify their job search on a state website — even, apparently, if they're among the rural poor without Internet access or transportation to whatever facilities might offer free Internet access.
James Goddard of Nebraska Appleseed, the only person to testify at Monday's public hearing besides Ricketts administration employees, noted the following, according to Paul Hammel's excellent coverage in the Omaha World-Herald:

Goddard, in his testimony, called
the requirements “out of touch” with current Internet- based job
searches. Under the proposed rule, someone who packed 10 job contacts
into only one day would lose jobless benefits, while someone who made
five contacts over three or four days would not, he said....Goddard said the online reporting requirements are also problematic. He
cited a report by the National Employment Law Project about a similar
reporting requirement in Florida that quadrupled the number of denials
based on procedural problems.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

A 2014 report on the questionable Ohio State band culture has received some attention from the Wall St. Journal, summarized by Derek Draplin of the University in The College Fix.The author of one of the more homophobic blasts was interviewed about his questionable verse, whereupon he immediately resorted to the Sarah Palin dodge about allegedly having gay friends who were not offended by what he wrote because they allegedly knew he wasn't serious.

Another song reviewed by the Journal about the Nebraska Cornhuskers, also in the Big Ten Conference, reveals lyrics about rape, erotic sex and homosexuality. “Nebraska got f—– in their cornholes” and “It’ll soften our d—- if
there’s chicks in the mix,” one song reads, while another says: “There’s
no place as gay as Nebraska, except maybe Michigan U. Where the girls
are all hairy, and the boys are all fairies, on your chest we will poo.” Matt Cominski, a former Ohio State band member who wrote one of the
controversial Nebraska songs, said he had “a lot of confidence that it
was never going to see the light of day.” “I knew a lot of people in the band were gay and they knew I wasn’t being serious,” Cominski told the Journal. “If I were writing to a broader audience or anyone other than a few close friends I would be horrified by those words.” Jon Woods, who was band director when the songbook was updated in
2012, was unable to be reached for comment, but Waters, who was formerly
his assistant and succeeded Woods, said he “understood it to be gone.”

Gays weren't the only target of the mostly-witless doggerel:

The anti-Semitic song “Goodbye Kramer” – disclosed Thursday by The Wall Street Journal – includes lyrics to the tune of Journey’s classic hit Don’t Stop Believin’
with a line where Nazi soldiers search “for people livin’ in their
neighbor’s attic” and a “small town Jew…who took the cattle train to you
know where.” “Head to the furnace room, ‘Bout to meet your fiery doom,” another
line of the song reads. “Oh the baking never ends, it goes on and on and
on and on.”

David Auerbach has written a terrific step-by-step guide to turning off the default settings Windows 10 chooses during an express install and where to find the other "secret" settings that the company has made VERY obscure. You should read and follow his guide, which is here.

The problems start with Microsoft’s ominous privacy policy,
which is now included in the Windows 10 end-user license agreement so
that it applies to everything you do on a Windows PC, not just online.
(Disclosure: I worked for Microsoft in the days of Windows XP.) It uses
some scary broad strokes:

Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal
data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other
private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good
faith belief that doing so is necessary.

Some have spun conspiracy theories out of that language. I’m more inclined to blame vagueness and sloppiness, not ill intent. With some public pressure, Microsoft is likely to specify how and why it will share your data. But even that won’t excuse Microsoft’s ham-fisted incursion into users’ data, nor how difficult it is restore the level of privacy back to what it was in Windows 7 and 8. Apple’s and Google’s privacy policies both have their own issues of collection and sharing, but Microsoft’s is far vaguer when it comes to what the company collects, how it will use it, and who it will share it... The install settings are only a subset of Windows 10’s privacy settings, which occupy more than a dozen different pages and dialogue boxes across the user interface, none of them in plain sight

Iowa, too, has an ag-gag law designed to stifle exposes of "animal agriculture" cruelty. Maybe someone will sue there too. Sen. Mike Gronstal, who should be ashamed of himself, helped pass Iowa's bill, as did these lawmakers.
The Idaho law was challenged by People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA),The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), Idaho's ACLU, The Center for Food Safety, CounterPunch and journalist Will
Potter of GreenistheNewRed.com.
It permitted the state to jail anyone who secretly records animal abuse during an undercover investigation. Six other states have ag-gag laws.
The law was passed after lobbying by Big Ag following an undercover investigation which showed the Bettencourt Dairy was abusing and sexually molesting cows. Below is the shocking video recorded by Mercy for Animals.

Judge B. Lynn Winmill, of the United States District Court for the
District of Idaho, found the law violated the First Amendment and rights
to equal protection [PDF].
“The state may not agree with the message certain groups seek to
convey about Idaho’s agricultural production facilities, such as
releasing secretly recorded videos of animal abuse to the Internet and
calling for boycotts,” Winmill wrote. But, “it cannot deny such groups
equal protection of the laws in their exercise of their right to free
speech.”

B. Lynn Winmill,Chief Judge of the U.S.District Court
for the District of Idaho

The judge contended ALDF had “come forward with abundant evidence
that the law was enacted with the discriminatory purpose of silencing
animal rights activists who conduct undercover investigations in the
agricultural industry.” Beyond that, Winmill argued the First Amendment protected undercover
investigations, including lies told by undercover investigators to
uncover corruption.“The lies used to facilitate undercover investigations actually
advance core First Amendment values by exposing misconduct to the public
eye and facilitating dialogue on issues of considerable public
interest. This type of politically-salient speech is precisely the type
of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect,” Winmill stated. ...The law “gives agricultural facility owners veto power, allowing
owners to decide what can and cannot be recorded, effectively turning
them into state-backed censors able to silence unfavorable speech about
their facilities,” Winmill maintained. The law circumvents
“long-established defamation law and whistleblowing statutes by
punishing employees for publishing true and accurate recordings on
matters of public concern. The expansive reach of this statute is hard
to reconcile with basic speech, whistleblower, and press rights.” ...The state made no credible argument explaining why “counterspeech”
would not be able to protect companies or facilities from “interference
by wrongful conduct.” “If an undercover investigator “staged a video” at an agricultural
production facility, as some Idaho legislators fear, not only could the
facility owner sue the investigator for fraud or defamation, but the
facility owner could launch its own public relations campaign to refute
the video.” “The remedy for misleading speech, or speech we do not like, is more speech, not enforced silence,” Winmill declared.

“The ruling sets the stage for ag-gag laws to be challenged in other
states on similar grounds. The ALDF, PETA and others are currently
fighting ag-gag in Utah,” Potter added. “The recent passage of North
Carolina’s sweeping ag-gag laws, which is so broad it includes those who
expose abuse at daycares and nursing homes, clearly cannot withstand
scrutiny, either.”

We'd like to make some snide insinuation about Cuomo turning into a meathead, but no one who watches his CNN show would believe such lies about one of TVs quickest, smartest and most persistent interviewers, who never abandons politeness and never loses his focus on issues to get lost in the weeds of personal attacks or guest-baiting.
Anyway, he stretched a 90-day regimen to 180 days, but gained 10 pounds of muscle. How'd he do that? Go here, boys.

In response to Sen. Sasse's "humbly" requested input, AKSARBENT humbly suggests that people who didn't get an invitation park themselves outside the Blair venue with placards pointing out Sasse's litany of right-wing legislative provocations against a middle class that is already on the ropes.
For this, neither an invitation nor a government-issued I.D. is required, or at least wasn't the last time we checked the freedom-to-assemble part of the U.S. Constitution.
Sasse, backed by Wall St. fatcats who have vowed to put farm subsidies on a "path to elimination," kicked 50,000 gay Nebraskans to the curb with his anti-gay marriage stance and used transparently cheap GOP semantics to deny the human cause of global warming. He is a right-wing ideologue without vision.
When running for election he tweeted a picture of Herbie Husker as a Team Sasse member, then deleted the tweet without explanation when the University of Nebraska (which likes to keep Herbie nonpartisan) got riled.
Sasse was a signatory to hothead Sen. Tom Cotton's possibly treasonous letter attempting to sabotage White House negotiations with Iran on its development of nuclear energy.
In the interim between being elected and taking office, Sasse was too busy to talk to KMTV about the then-just-released CIA torture report but somehow found the time to talk to an antigay radio hate group leader.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Anderson's family said she died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday. She is survived by her partner, Mentor Williams, her father, and her children, Lisa Sutton, Melissa Hempel and Gray Stream. Her parents were country
songwriters Casey and Liz Anderson. Anderson was born in Grand Forks, N.D., but raised in Sacramento. An accomplished equestrian, she was voted California Horse Show Queen in 1966. Her personal life was occasionally tumultuous.

Here is the quadraphonic release of Rose Garden:

From the YouTube annotation:

This is "Rose Garden" by Lynn Anderson taken from an original SQ
Quadraphonic LP and remastered by me. If you have the standard stereo
version of this song, which is the only version of this song ever
released on any CD to date, then you will appreciate this one because it
sounds virtually identical to the 45 rpm version that was released to
radio in 1970. The SQ Quad version is also 13 seconds longer too. This
is the only version that has THAT sound that made it an instant hit!
Enjoy this truly rare version.

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.